Monday, February 22, 2010

How Do You Spell Hypocrisy? G O P

Feb. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Alabama Republicans Jo Bonner and Robert Aderholt took to the U.S. House floor in July, denouncing the Obama administration’s stimulus plan for failing to boost employment. “Where are the jobs?” each of them asked.

Over the next three months, Bonner and Aderholt tried at least five times to steer stimulus-funded transportation grants to Alabama on grounds that the projects would help create thousands of jobs.

They joined more than 100 congressional Republicans and several Democrats who, after voting against the stimulus bill, wrote Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood seeking money from $1.5 billion the plan set aside for local road, bridge, rail and transit grants. The $862 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed last year with no Republican votes in the House and three in the Senate.

Bonner said opposing the stimulus doesn’t mean he shouldn’t help Alabama projects compete for grants. “It is my role to ensure that their request is considered by the federal agency,” he said in an e-mail.

Alan Simpson, a former Republican senator from Wyoming named by President Barack Obama as co-chairman of a new deficit- reduction commission, said about-faces on government funding aren’t surprising.

“It’s the original sin of Washington -- it’s hypocrisy,” Simpson said. “You can’t do that then say you go out and cut the other stuff.”

Democrats have found an issue that will resonate with moderates in my opinion and that is for all their bashing of the stimulus bill, Republicans themselves have stated in letters asking for stimulus money that it would in fact create jobs. That's hypocrisy plain and simple my friend and Democrats would be well served to resist the temptation to be nice and actually use that word for a change.